The Notion Club Papers (NCPs) is a novel by JRR Tolkien - unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. The Notion Club was a fantasy version of The Inklings.

Thursday, 29 December 2016

Is Howard Shore's music the very best thing about the Lord of the Rings Movies (which are, themselves, among the very best movies ever)

Just asking.

Because I can hardly listen to the soundtrack without tearing-up, again and again. No other film score has ever affected me this way.

Now, of course, the impact of the music is aided by my memories of Tolkien's original book (my favourite of all books); and by the marvellous scenes that the movie has in its best moments (which are many); but a very large proportion of what is best about the movies is indeed in the soundtrack.

Shore's is the only music I have ever found which, at times, really captures the spirit of Lord of the Rings; and I have been looking for such music more than forty years...

3 comments:

Two years ago my family was fortunate enough to attend a live performance of the score. It accompanied the entire director's cut of the Trilogy. The forces needed for this marathon performance were vast: a large orchestra (the San Jose Symphony), huge chorus, children's chorus, numerous vocal soloists, and performers on various antique instruments. The movies were projected on a huge screen.

But Arwen wept most of her screen time, so she wasn't really 'butch' - Although (aside) interestingly Tolkien (in Unfinished Tales) described Galadriel (Arwen's grandmother) as an Amazon who could fight as well as all but the best elven males.

I think you mean the ultra-camp wood elf Haldir in Lothlorien (who became a kind of gay icon - and featured in some comic-parodic 'slash' fiction I once read; rather than Celebrimbor who doesn't appear onscreen.

(C. was the great Noldorian craftsman who made the three elven rings, hid them - then later got captured, tortured and killed by Sauron in revenge - during the Second Age.)